So, Barack: Islamic press not swooning? Bummer.

Imagine playing basketball where the referees always give you every break. You get every call, you never get called for traveling, carrying, or fouling anybody else, even if you pile-drive them into the ground. You drive the lane, elbow people out of the way, and they get called for a foul. If somebody enters your 6-foot foul halo, they get whistled. No matter if you’re an untalented hack who pads his stats with a referee tailwind blowing like Hurricane Gilbert. With help like that you come off looking like Michael Jordan.

In other words, imagine you are Dwyane Wade.

But really, you don’t have to imagine, do you?
Never in the history of America since George Washington [because really, who was going to vote against Washington?] has a presidential candidate enjoyed the outright cheering of the majority media with such ferocity. With virtually no qualifications, no executive or even significant legislative experience, open but utterly unexplored questions about your associations, your shady financial dealings, your drug use, clouds surrounding your birth citizenship, obviously radical views on abortion, your oft-stated plans to turn America into Cuba, your obvious lack of depth, your complete dependence on Binky the Teleprompter — all that, and not the least bit of media curiosity. None. Your Hope-n-Change mantra caused media leg tingles and outright fainting. It was all butterflies, rainbows, and ponies for you and your bitter shrew wife.

Meanwhile your opponents — first Hillary, then Media Whore McCain, and finally your oratorical and charismatic superior in Sarah Palin — were subjected to the most brutal assaults the media could muster. Dirty laundry made public, outright lies told. Voters who support your opponent get their cars keyed. Even media professionals that drifted from Obamatude found themselves unemployed or assigned to the Somalia beat. With all that, you managed a 53-46 victory, but to hear the press tell it, it was rather like Sitting Bull over Custer.

Once you got elected – O Lord, let’s not even discuss the media love you’ve benefited from. Julius Caesar coming home from the wars didn’t get this kind of treatment.

So when you gave your newest, grandest America Sucks rant in Cairo — using all your favorite oratory tricks, disgracing and slandering America with every breath, praising Islam for practically every invention, artistic triumph, and technical advance ever conceived — it must have come as a bit of a downer to see that your speech didn’t exactly wow ’em in the Middle East.

The refs, the media, actually called fouls on you. Shocking! They pointed out double-speak, they noted that you are [in Texas parlance] “all hat and no cattle”, and showed no signs of fainting or leg-tingles, nor did they take your utterances as having been handed down from above.

Don’t expect America’s government-controlled media to report this, but here’s some excerpts of what they’re saying in the Islamic world, courtesy of South Africa’s Mail & Guardian. The mood was cautiously optimistic in some quarters, but typically skeptical – either that talk was cheap, or that Barry was in the end no different than Bush.

Hassan Fadlallah, a lawmaker for Lebanon’s Hezbolla, said the Islamic world did not need moral or political sermons. “It needs a fundamental change in American policy beginning from a halt to complete support for Israeli aggression on the region, especially on Lebanese and Palestinians, to an American withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Khadija Patel, editor of Al Huda magazine in Johannesburg, said: “I am not living in the east and yet I am Muslim so I am not sure if Obama’s speech applies to me. However I must say that his speech was acknowledging a place for Muslims in the world. I personally applaud him for making the comment about Muslim woman not being oppressed because they wear the Hijab. It was refreshing to hear him say that because Western media keeps throwing that in our faces. We should not get overexcited though because Obama is like the uncle who comes to visit and brings sweets, but are those sweets really for us?”

Sheikh Mohamed Ibrahim Bilal from Somali insurgent movement al-Shabaab,
said Obama’s speech was useless unless he stopped his political interference with Somalia and the Muslim world. “If he means what he says, let him withdraw his troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Stop supporting Amisom (African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia) and the Somalia government.”

Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, a former Afghan prime minister, said: “From one side, he opens his bosom to Islam. From the other side, his troops are killing Afghanistan, what he says is totally different from what his soldiers are doing here.”

Mohamed Habib, Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader, said the speech was a “public relations address” more than anything else. “There’s an unjust perspective on the part of the American president towards the Palestinian issue, one that does not differ from former President Bush’s and the neoconservatives’ perspective.“

Mohammad Marandi, head of North American studies Tehran University said: “America has to change. Talking is not enough. He can make a few more speeches but people are starting to ask: What are you going to change? The US has to re-evaluate its policies towards the region, whether towards Iran, or whether towards Palestine.”

Ebrahim Bham secretary general of the Council of Muslim Theologians in South Africa, said “inconsistencies” remained in the US’s policy in the Middle East. For instance, it remains to be seen whether Israel, an acknowledged nuclear power, yet a non-signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, is going to be held accountable in the same way Iran is being taken to task for her nuclear programme in the US’s effort to prevent an arms race in the Middle East.”

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Ah, but Barack, chin up. You’re still the darling of the American government-controlled media. Leg tingles and swooning are in abundance.